


Between Sun and Geography

by Owlship



Series: Lifelines (Soulmate Fics) [6]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Max Rockatansky Comes Back To The Citadel, Thoughts of Self-harm, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8510434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: She can barely look at the wastelander's wings. They're poor ratty things, the feathers cracking and brittle, dissolving into dust and leaving visible gaps even when he has them tightly furled. Everyone knows that if your wingmate dies you'll never fly again, but Furiosa has never seen the damage up close like this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to say that some liberties had been taken with regards to wing anatomy, but then I remembered that people don't actually have magical soulmate wings which means I can do what I want.
> 
> "Body Horror" tag refers to descriptions of wings that have lost their feathers, the tone of which may be upsetting. "Thoughts of Self-Harm" tag refers to thoughts of removing said wings; the thoughts are not described in much detail but the idea is mentioned a few times.
> 
> Title from Pablo Neruda's "[Bird](http://hellopoetry.com/poem/9911/bird/)"

She can barely look at the wastelander's wings. They're poor ratty things, the feathers cracking and brittle, dissolving into dust and leaving visible gaps even when he has them tightly furled. Everyone knows that if your wingmate dies you'll never fly again, but Furiosa has never seen the damage up close like this.

It makes her own wings twitch outwards a little before settling again, the healthy feathers gliding smoothly across one another.

It would have been useful if she wasn't the only one of them who can fly, but there isn't anything to do about it. Few of the War Boys chasing them have found their wings, and the Rig is past the bog now anyway; she would be very surprised if any of them left the war party to even attempt trailing her so far out, especially with the Bullet Farmer dead. Even Joe knows when he's fighting a losing battle.

With the sun risen high overhead the wastelander is driving while she looks for signs of the Green Place, trying and failing to find landmarks in the shifting sands.

“I'm going aloft,” Furiosa tells the group. The Rig isn't driving so fast that she'll be in danger of being left behind- not that she thinks the wastelander would do that to her, not now- but having the War Rig under someone else's control while she's gone entirely still makes her nervous.

The man hums an acknowledgment and she catches his wings curling a little bit tighter. She wonders how long it's been since he last flew. The girls are tired today, worn out still from the day and night before, and offer no comment other than a few nods.

The flightroof is already open so all she needs to do is climb out entirely, and though she feels the wastelander downshift to slow their pace there's more than enough wind to catch her feathers when she jumps into the air.

There isn't any way for her to describe how flight feels to someone who hasn't found their wingmate; it's the wind over feathers lifting her up, the steady beat of muscles few people even have, senses that are only so acute now that she needs them. Furiosa has had her wings since the day she was born and cannot imagine life without them, even the thought of her feathers going dull and dead more terrible to consider than nearly any other fate if only because of what it would mean.

The noise of the War Rig tapers off the higher she goes, until the only thing she can hear is the rushing of the wind.

Up here the entire world seems to spread out before her, a nearly endless expanse of wasteland dissolving into a fuzzy horizon. She doesn't see anything that looks like a green place and she has to tamp down the worry, rechecks her memory and thinks she must have just misremembered how long it took for the slavers to get to the mountain range.

There's something artificial cutting through the swath of sand and Furiosa checks the War Rig's position before veering off to fly a little closer. It looks like a metal tower, and it's too far to tell for sure but she thinks she remembers something like it.

She can't get much closer without being in danger of needing to play catch-up with the Rig, but she stares for a minute more before wheeling around. She dives for the truck with wings folded, pulling up with just enough clearance to drop directly down into her seat through the flightroof.

The wastelander doesn't react to her showy entrance other than to look at her with a question on his face, the same as the Wives are silently asking.

“There's something southwards,” Furiosa says, and lets herself feel a bit of hope bubble through her.

“Something like what?” Toast asks while the man obediently turns the wheel to start altering their course.

“If it's what I think: a watchtower,” she replies.

  
  


When the first swell of rage and grief over the loss of her homeland gives way to bone-weary exhaustion, Furiosa sits side-by-side with Val in the sand, their wings curled around to form a wall between them and the group as if they're still children.

She'll drop the barrier soon enough- the area here is quiet now, but if the Vuvalini set a trap that means they're expecting travelers this way- but for now, she wants the illusion of privacy. Valkyrie fits into her arms differently than she did when they were young, but the effect is the same.

“I always knew you'd be back,” Val tells her. “It was enough knowing you were alive, but I knew you'd come back to us some day.”

“I dreamed of flying over the mountains,” Furiosa says. She might have managed it, if she was lucky and the wind patterns weren't too treacherous, but the most she can carry is a day's worth of water before she becomes to heavy to fly. And that's not counting her arm or any other supplies.

Val soothes a hand down her right arm and then says, “What happened to your wings?”

“Dye,” she replies, and stretches her wings just slightly at the mention to give her a better look. They should match Valkyrie's, a honey-gold color like ripe grain, but instead they're a flat inky black. “He wanted us all to look the same. And make it harder to know who's mated with who.”

The color will fade on its own somewhat, lightened by the sun and scrubbing sand, but it won't truly go away until she molts again.

“Maybe I should do mine to match,” Val says, tone light. She reaches out to touch one of her wings and Furiosa reflexively snaps both of them shut to fold up tightly against her back, breaking their wall of feathers. Valkyrie looks startled and grabs her hand back nearly as quickly. “Sorry.”

Furiosa shakes her head, angry at her own reaction. They've preened each other's feathers as often as they used to play with their hair, and she _knows_ Val would never hurt her on purpose. Knows it deep inside the same part of her soul that pulled her wings out the first time she saw her.

“I don't like them being touched,” she says inadequately.

“Hey, it's okay,” Valkyrie says, retracting her own wings loosely behind herself.

Without the privacy granted by their wings the camp is once again right there, parked motorcycles and lean-to tents and a small nearly-smokeless fire heating up a kettle of what she would guess is tea. The Wives are sitting on blankets and looking up at the stars, the sound of their conversations too quiet and too far away to make out.

“What do you think about the idea of crossing the salt?” Valkyrie asks after a moment of silence.

Furiosa adjusts the position of her legs and looks at the War Rig, perched up on the ridge. The wastelander fool's sitting huddled next to it, ragged wings pulled up tight.

“We can live off that water for a couple hundred days,” she says, “Not as much fuel, but if we pack careful it'll stretch.”

She has her arm off, the heavy weight of it coiled on the driver's seat. It's getting cold enough even with the insulation her feathers provide that she thinks she might take one of the blankets the Vuvalini offered up.

She sighs. “If we're ever going to try, now's our best shot.”

Val nods, hand planted in the sand next to hers. The distance between them seems at once nonexistent and insurmountable. “But what do _you_ think?”

Furiosa draws up one of her legs, hooks her left arm around it. She glances again at the wastelander and then the War Boy, and she feels a prickle at the back of her neck where her brand sits, and she thinks about all the things that she knows for sure lie on this side of the plains.

“I think it's reckless,” she says, drawing the words out from her memory, trying to remember how the once-familiar refrain went, “And dangerous, and...”

“And downright stupid,” Valkyrie finishes, a smile in her voice. “The best ideas always are.”

  
  


And then it's all over, and Furiosa wants to cry like she hasn't since she was very small. But even breathing hurts, and she hasn't wasted water like that in nearly ten thousand days, and she has more important things to see to.

When she can move well enough she preens her wings as she's always done, though there isn't much point in it anymore. She'll never fly again, not now that her wingmate is gone. The fact that the primaries of her left wing were ripped out as she nearly fell under the Gigahorse's wheels only speeds up her new grounded reality.

There aren't many in the Citadel who've found their wings, and even fewer who've lost them and lived to tell about it. Furiosa is used to being stared at, used to being an anomaly, and refuses to hide away.

  
  


When Max- and she'd needed to be told his name, didn't remember anything of him opening her chest and opening his veins- comes back, he's wearing a cape of sorts over his back. She can make out the vague shape of his wings through the fabric and doesn't press him. Already she's begun shedding feathers, and it seems appropriate now that they've already been dyed black and dead.

Furiosa holds his head against hers in greeting and keeps her wings tightly furled, though they want to flare out and encircle him.

He smells like the wasteland and it seems as if he's brought half of it with him, his clothes shedding dust behind him as he follows alongside her through the hallways.

“Are you hungry?” she asks, knowing that a wastelander is always hungry. He tilts his head and hums a little, noncommittal like he's going to refuse, and she says, “There's enough for another mouth.”

Max lets out an amused-sounding puff of air and says, “Shouldn't give it away.”

“We don't,” she says, and feels the ache of scars freshly knitted together. She resists the urge to wrap an arm around her chest. “You've already earned more than a few meals.”

He looks at her without responding, brow heavy with confusion. Furiosa doesn't try to argue with his scav's sense of economics, only brings him to the meal hall and presses a battered dish filled with stew into his hands. They're still experimenting with what will feed the most people, what the green will grow and how much of it; the staples of Joe's reign were more wasteful than any of them had anticipated.

She eats with him, more to be a buffer when the girls find them than because she's hungry. It's not a great idea to give him too much too fast if he hasn't been eating regularly, but when he's scraping the bottom of his plate and she's barely had half of hers, she slides her dish his way.

Max gives her another confused look, but he eats the stew willingly enough.

  
  


The sun goes down and he gets twitchy, eyes darting around at nothing. He'd arrived on foot, his car tucked away somewhere between here and Buzzard territory, and though she can tell that he wants to get back to it for the night she isn't sure he won't leave entirely.

“Do you have a place to sleep?” Furiosa asks, and he grunts.

“My car's-” he waves a hand out to one of the windows- “out.” By his tone and by what she knows of him, she is sure he's telling her that he means to leave rather than pointing out the inconvenience.

The last time she'd asked anything like this of him he turned her down, and she isn't looking forward to a repeat of it. “You could stay the night,” she says, and can't quite help the way her wings curl a little around her shoulders, defensive.

Max looks indecisive rather than rejecting the offer outright.

“You'll need help carrying water over,” she says, and his eyebrows raise in surprise.

“I didn't barter for that,” he says.

She shakes her head. “You don't need to, Max.” It's the first time she's said his name to his face and in the dim light she cannot read his reaction to it clearly, just can see that he does react, hears a rustle of feathers against fabric.

He nods after a moment of silence. “I can bed down here.”

Furiosa takes him to her own room, rather than risk him waking in one of the communal rooms with strangers or the guest rooms that look a little too much like cells for her comfort. She isn't scared of him but she's always wary about anyone being in her space when she's as vulnerable as sleep makes her. But she trusts him, and she has a half-dozen weapons stashed around the room and knowing the location and working condition of each of them makes her feel secure enough to invite him in.

He's stopped shedding dust so much over the course of the afternoon, but it's still encrusted over him and she doesn't want it in her bed.

“You'll have to take off your outer layers,” she says as she takes off her prosthesis, but he isn't listening; she follows his line of sight and sees the pair of broad flight feathers she has laying on a shelf over her worktable. Valkyrie's, bright and shining still, and one of his, cracked and battered and dusty brown. “You left it in the Gigahorse,” she tells him.

Max jerks a little like he's startled to hear her voice. He blinks, then hums. “Happens.”

“If you want it back...” she lets the offer hang unspoken. Her bedding is stuffed with her own feathers, the soft downy ones filling a pair of pillows and the flight and greater covert feathers jammed into the mattress, beaten soft enough after so much use. She herself doesn't particularly like knowing hers are in someone's hands but at the end of the day, they're just shed feathers.

He shakes his head with a little shrug.

Furiosa slides out of her boots and leaves them by the door, then starts undoing her belt. If she was alone she would strip entirely to give her clothes a chance to air out, but tonight she only unlaces the bracer around her middle and leaves the rest.

When she looks up, he hasn't so much as removed the cloak.

“You're too dusty for the bed,” she says, “And I'm not making you sleep on the ground.”

Max shifts his weight from foot to foot, then nods his head more like he's doing it for himself than to show compliance. He looks away from her as he sheds his layers and she sees why he added the cloak.

His folded-up wings look almost entirely without feathers, a grotesque patchwork of pebbled skin and straggling feathers. She holds back from making an audible reaction but only barely. Was he caught by someone and plucked bare, or is this what she has to look forward to?

He has his head dipped when he looks at her, shoulders hunched. Furiosa wonders whether she should say something, whether she shouldn't.

“Boots too,” she says, and thinks she sees a little flicker of relief in his expression for not addressing the obvious.

With Valkyrie, they would curl up face-to-face, wings meshing to drape over the both of them. When she is alone and the door is locked she often sprawls out face-down, wings trailing over both sides of the mattress. With Max, she lies on her side so her back is to the middle of the bed and tries to keep her wings folded out of his space.

She can feel the barest brush of his wings against hers as he settles on the narrow mattress, and counts her breaths until she falls asleep.

  
  


He stays for three days. The second night she preens the dust out of her feathers and he watches with a sort of longing in his expression, and she resolutely doesn't look anywhere near his wings.

“Do you want help,” Max asks, voice quiet.

She looks up from where she's futilely repairing a splice in the fibers of one of her primaries, not having expected him to say anything.

“Back's hard enough with two hands,” he says, and shrugs as if the offer means nothing to either of them.

Furiosa regards him for a moment, the urge to snap her wings up against her back at the mere suggestion long since mastered. She hasn't let another person touch her wings since she was taken, save Val in the hazy light of dawn when she could muster it.

But he's right; she never even manages to get the dye all the way into her shoulder feathers because reaching is nearly impossible, has been living with a twisted tertiary that's maddening to feel since the road.

She does look at his own wings then, a patchwork of feathers and skin that shouldn't ever be bare. He had someone to help preen his feathers himself, once.

“Alright,” Furiosa says, and lets the feather she was working on slip through her fingers as she readjusts her position on the mattress.

He moves to sit behind her and some part of her tenses, wary of someone in her blind spot and so close to such a deceptively delicate part of herself, but another part wants to lean back against him. Max touches her shoulder lightly, a warning brush, and when she doesn't react because she is willfully holding herself still he trails his fingers down to where her feathers begin.

She lets out a shivery little breath at the feeling. Wings are incredibly sensitive- they have to be, in order to feel air currents well enough to stay aloft- and it's been a very long time since she's had someone other than herself touch hers without the intent to cause pain.

He moves deftly, feathers that are slowly losing their luster slipping through his fingers as he neatens their placement, here and there stopping to zip the fibers back together with careful strokes. He reaches the twisted feather and she twitches away before she can stop herself.

“It needs to come out,” Furiosa tells him, settling back into place.

He hums, and puts one hand flat on the meat of her wing while the other very carefully feels underneath the layer of feathers, until she can feel his fingertip against her skin and can't suppress the shiver that runs through her, though she holds her wing in place this time. “Ready?” he asks, and she nods.

Max yanks the feather out in one swift motion, right from the root of the quill, and the sharp pain of it has her wings sweeping back to hit against him in instinctive defense.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles, and she pulls her wings back in, shaking her head.

“I asked you to,” she says. It's not the sort of reaction she can control, far too instinctual, but she feels bad about it all the same. “I can reach the rest.”

He's quiet a moment, not moving away from his position behind her. “Can I help,” he says softly.

Furiosa cranes her neck around to look at him. His wings are so tightly bunched up behind him she wonders if they hurt, and his gaze is dropped down to the feather he'd pulled out, a bright speck of blood on the end of the messily dyed shaft.

“Okay,” she says, just as quietly.

There's a long stretch of seconds where nothing happens, and then his hands are back on her wings, slow and careful as he sets them to rights. She only really needs help with the very ends, where her wings meet the skin of her back, but she doesn't say anything to stop Max when he goes so far as the elbow joint.

Feeling someone's hands on her like this, caressing her where she's most sensitive, is almost overwhelmingly intense. By itself it isn't sexual but Furiosa can feel his body heat behind her, can smell the musk of his skin, how his big hands are so careful and nimble as he works, and she's taken with a sudden surge of _want_ that surprises her. It hadn't been like that with Valkyrie- they were too young to seriously begin exploring the idea sex when she was taken, and the single night they had after was too filled with other things to even entertain the notion.

The thought of exploring it now with him makes her wings shiver and he pulls back. She has to restrain herself from making any noise at the loss, unsure if she's relieved or disappointed.

She stretches out her wings a few times before furling them again while Max shifts on the mattress.

“I could get yours,” she says, knowing how ridiculous an offer it is. When she turns to him again he looks incredibly sad, eyes heavy. “It can't be comfortable.”

She expects him to say no. To shake his head and hunch in on himself. But very slowly he nods, and turns so his back is to her.

He stretches out his wings for the first time since she's known him and she draws in a sympathetic breath. He hasn't lost quite as many feathers as it had seemed, but what he does have are in terrible shape.

All of his flight feathers are gone save a few scattered secondaries, and most of the skin that's showing is on the extreme ends near the wrist, where wind and erosion would have plucked the coverts away. But even right up close to his body the feathers themselves are ragged, barbs tatty and quills broken and splitting, their color dull and lifeless.

Furiosa waits out the flinch he gives when she brushes her hand against him until he's still, and then she very slowly works through what she can of the damage. Fistfuls of feathers fall out at the slightest pressure but he doesn't react as if they hurt, and there's no blood on their ends. It's like he's molting, but taken to the extreme.

She tries to leave as many intact feathers as she can, wants to spread oil from her own preening glands onto him to see if that can salvage any more, but it's a losing battle.

When she's done all she thinks she can she takes her hand away and leans back. Max doesn't bother stretching out his wings, just folds them back in and says in a hoarse voice, “Thank you.”

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

He shakes his head and turns so he's more or less facing her. “Not much.”

Furiosa looks down at the pile of mangled feathers in her lap and feels unbearably aware of the fact that it'll be her, sooner or later. She's sure it hurts; maybe not sharp like a pulled feather, but how could it not hurt at all?

  
  


He leaves on the third day, wings covered back up again. She drives him out to his car and they stand for a long silent moment forehead to forehead, holding each others' heads in their hands. No other goodbyes are exchanged, and she's soon driving back to the Citadel with his dust in her rearview.

  
  


When he comes back a second time, Furiosa has started losing the primaries on her right wing. She doesn't think it's supposed to be this fast but she never paid much attention to the few who'd lost their wingmates, and she can't talk to the surviving Vuvalini about it without being overwhelmed by the knowledge that she's lost her wingmate and they've lost their daughter.

This time his wings really are nearly featherless, pale red and unnatural. Max preens her wings again and she doesn't offer to do anything to his, too wary of making the last few feathers drop away.

Despite the deterioration he stays longer, seems more relaxed. Engages with the girls easier, even teases and jokes around a little and only stares off into nothing a handful of times.

Furiosa is glad to see it, though her heart clenches with the knowledge that he'll leave eventually. When he preens her wings next she leans back against him after he's finished and his hands slide against her sides, warm through the fabric of her shirt.

The spark of wanting she'd felt hasn't really ever gone away but only waxes and wanes. Now with him back it's built up again, simmering under her skin.

Max rests the side of his face against her head and lets her be held without saying anything. She wants to push against him, wants to get her mouth on his and lose herself for a while in his body, but she doesn't know if he would want it and she isn't sure she wants to unbalance things between them.

So she leans her weight against him and simmers, and when she wakes in the morning to see that she's turned over on the mattress so her molting wing is draped over his side, she isn't very surprised.

He stays longer this time but he still leaves.

  
  


The third time Max returns, a very curious thing has happened. She's started shedding feathers quickly enough that she knows it's not right, has talked with the Vuvalini after they approached her to ask if she was pulling them herself, but none of them have any ideas what it could be.

In the quiet of her room Max slips off his cloak and rather than his wings being completely featherless, or wearing away to bone as she's sure must be the next step, the skin is entirely covered in pin feathers.

Furiosa can't contain a sharp noise of surprise. She's never heard of anything like this, not in any of the stories of wingmates that she's encountered. When your mate dies, your wings die along with them- they don't _grow back_.

He keeps them furled, but gingerly like he's afraid to damage them.

Her own wings twitch and resettle against her back. “You're molting?” she asks, knowing already that isn't what this is. Molting happens a few feathers at a time, not a slow dwindling down to entirely bare skin followed by a complete return.

Max shrugs a shoulder. “Don't know what,” he says. Which at least tells her that this isn't normal for him either, a fact that reassures her somewhat.

She hasn't kept her wings hidden under layers like he has, but their condition has deteriorated quickly enough that she's starting to consider it. All of her flight feathers are gone, large chunks of her coverts. The delicate down between the larger feathers crumble to dust all on their own, a little more with every movement.

Furiosa is reluctant to let him preen her this time because of it, but fair's fair. His hands are so careful on her wings, barely putting any force at all into his movements, but still there's a collection of fallen feathers in his lap when he's done.

“Are yours ready to shed?” she asks, curling her wings up against herself and trying not to look at the pile of feathers.

He twists his head to look down at his wings and then shrugs. She wonders if he even tries to preen himself ever, or if the effort of it seems pointless when all the care in the world won't let him fly again.

She runs her hand carefully through the bristles of his growing feathers. The flight feathers still have blood running through them as they grow and she leaves them well alone, but some of the lesser coverts she can tease out of their waxy sheathes, and the sight of feathers once again starting to cover the flesh of his wings is such a relief she doesn't at first notices the strangest part of all of this.

“Max,” Furiosa says, working the casing off another feather. “What color are your wings?”

He twists his head around to look over his shoulder at her with a confused expression, forehead scrunched up. Then he glances down at where she's working and she can feel him going rigid and tense.

The feather he shed in the Gigahorse that she still has on her shelf is brown. Faded, yes, but undeniably brown. Anyone who had ever seen his wings would call them brown.

The feathers uncurling from their sheathes on his wings now are a soft gray, like smoke drifting against the sky.

Max stares down at the newly uncovered feathers and then at her, then back at his wings. He abruptly snaps his wings closed, any calm the mutual preening might have granted him entirely evaporated. “I need to,” he says, getting to his feet without finishing the thought.

“Hey,” she says, “It's the middle of the night.” She doesn't know if he means he needs to leave or he needs to find someone to ask or if he needs to be away from her- the last one stings a little bit, as if he thinks her preening damaged his feathers.

He swings his head around like just realizing this, wings twitching behind him.

Furiosa doesn't offer up any solutions for him, doesn't suggest he walk in the green, or curl up in his car (brought up from the ground this time, finally; he'd needed to repair his transmission), or wait until morning to see if the light is making illusions, or to call on the night medic. She wants to return to five minutes ago when the mood was peaceful and calming but it's an impossibility, and she'll settle for seeing what _he_ wants.

He does a tight walk-around of her room, half undressed- she'd convinced him to wash his shirt out and it's drying on the stone of her windowsill. There's a pile of waxy feather casings in her lap and she starts gathering them up, taking her eyes off him for the illusion of privacy.

She thinks he's going to speak once or twice as he paces, but then he nods his head like he's reached a decision, and comes to stand next to where she's sitting on the bed.

“I need air,” Max says, like he's asking permission.

The lifts won't be running again until the morning, and she's pretty sure he isn't crazy enough to try flying when his flights are still blooded- but even if he was, he doesn't need her permission.

“Okay,” she says.

He waits another moment, looking at her like he's expecting her to say something else, and then throws his jacket on over his bare skin, tugs on his boots. He's out the door without looking back and Furiosa can only look at his drying shirt and his discarded pack as reassurances that he'll be back.

  
  


She doesn't mean to fall asleep, wouldn't have thought that she _could_ , but Max opening her door in the early dawn wakes her up. He flicks his eyes to her and then away as she pushes up off the mattress.

He stands there just beyond the doorway awkwardly for a moment. “Sorry for waking you.”

Furiosa shakes her head, and stretches herself out until she remembers her faltering wings, and winces instead as she feels another feather detaching. It doesn't hurt- the quills are entirely bloodless- but it's not a feeling she wants to savor.

“Your car'll be done faster with help,” she says once she's entirely upright. She wonders what sort of thinking he did, if he talked to anyone or came to any conclusions, because he looks calmer than he had before. He hasn't plucked himself as far as she can tell, a reassurance she didn't know she was looking for.

Max tilts his head to the side a little, eyebrows coming together in confusion before smoothing back out. He bobs his head. “You're not busy?”

“I'm always busy,” she replies, “Today I can be busy with your ride.”

The edge of his lips tick up a bit into a smile, and he nods again with a wordless humming noise.

  
  


They spend the day on his car and it's finished before nighfall, running smoother than she would bet it's run for him a thousand days or more, but Max doesn't drive away immediately. He stays for dinner, and follows her back to her room, and when he takes off his shirt for the second night in a row Furiosa strips down to her own underwear, tired of wearing her leathers in bed and wondering a bit if it'll get a reaction out of him.

Neither of them preens their wings, or each others', and there are a few pin casing and shed feathers on the bed in the morning that neither acknowledge.

He leaves the next afternoon just after the hottest part of the day, and in addition to the scrap she can't stop him from trying to trade he pulls out from his pack a small bundle of papers which he passes directly to her.

Furiosa takes it somewhat awkwardly, caught off guard by something so different from the tangle of car parts and assorted salvage, but she holds the papers securely as he drives off. Only once he's gone does she actually look at the bundle and realize that it's a collection of photographs all strung together, faded and full of flattened creases but showing scenes of the world Before clearly enough.

She can't figure out why he'd give it to her but she tucks it away on her shelf, eventually pinning up the one she likes best so she can see it without disturbing the others.

  
  


Her wings dwindle down to a handful of feathers each, sensitive skin exposed to the wind and sun and curious eyes, and Furiosa begins to think about cutting them off.

They're hideous and _wrong_ and every time she catches sight of them sickness coils in her. Her wings are supposed to match Valkyrie's, are supposed to slowly decay over thousands of days as her wingmate rots in the ground until they're both just bone. It's been less than three hundred since Val died and they're all but bare, like the two of them were never connected.

Furiosa runs her fingers over Valkyrie's feather on her shelf, careful lest she damage it. Plucked when she was alive and healthy it's still lustrous, doesn't seem to know that the person who grew it is dead.

Just as carefully she touches Max's feather, worn and ragged. Her feathers are falling out too quickly to dry up and crack the way his had and she hates that he was given that extra time, hates that he's being given entirely new wings.

In the council room earlier she saw a former Milking Mother lock eyes with a former Wretched, and watched a set of wings blossom into being behind the both of them. It was the first time she'd seen someone find their wingmate and she'd been unable to call the sight anything but beautiful, even as sharp jealousy twisted deep inside of her chest.

Their wings are russet, shining and sleek and strong, a perfect mirror-image pair. There was no slow growth, no naked limbs covered in pin feathers- there was just some ripping cloth as their shirts got in the way and then whole and beautiful wings unfurling into the air like they'd been there all along.

Furiosa had pressed herself to the wall and felt cold stone on bare skin and wanted to scream. When she congratulated them, voice flat but her words sincere- who wouldn't want to find their wingmate?- her decaying wings twitched behind her back and she saw the horror in their eyes at the sight.

She knows how badly an amputation hurts, knows how it feels to suddenly be missing a limb that she's had since birth, what it's like to feel pain and itches and every type of phantom sensation without having a way to relieve them. And yet still she sits in the privacy of her room and thinks about cutting off the remnants of her dead and useless wings because a lifetime of phantom aches seems like a better fate.

  
  


When Max comes back the next time, she doesn't at first notice that his wings are uncovered. Instead of a drape of blackish fabric there's a cascade of feathers behind him, tucked up close but full, healthy.

Furiosa stares and then wrenches her eyes away, feels her own all-but-bare wings tighten a little more against herself. He ducks his head and shrugs a shoulder a little, and that's all the acknowledgment they give.

The girls when they see gasp and exclaim over him and ask when his wings grew back, ask him who his wingmate is, and he says nothing, only answers with shrugs and grunts and tries to redirect their attention.

She can't stop staring out of the corner of her eyes. Max's wings had been shades of brown before, she is absolutely sure of it- but now they're gray, from near-white to nearly-black, a soft shifting of tones like the aftermath of a fire. Even furled she can see that the feathers are healthy and whole, if somewhat neglected.

She wonders if he's flown on them yet.

Furiosa waits until they're in her room that night before saying anything. She doesn't ask how or when, doesn't tell him that his wings are beautiful, doesn't echo the question of 'who?', only says, “They need to be preened.”

He looks over his shoulder and flutters his folded-up wings a bit and then shrugs. When she gestures in invitation he sits in front of her on her bed and flares his wings open, and she takes a moment to let herself feel intensely jealous.

They really are gorgeous, especially spread like this: a light gray field with dappled gray banding, smudging down to charcoal at the tips, shining with health even through the dust and unzipped barbs.

She rarely uses a brush but she does so now, sweeps the soft bristles over his feathers so the wasteland slips away in small clouds of red. Then she uses her fingers and carefully rejoins the fibers that have been split, settles the feathers back into place, spreads oil from his preening glands so they're shiny and conditioned.

Really, the only places he can't preen well himself are his shoulders, and she should leave the rest for him- but instead she goes from tertiaries to primaries, cleaning and resetting along the length of each wing while he sits still for her, body trusting and relaxed.

When Furiosa has spent as much time as she can justify preening him she puts her hand between the roots of his wings, where she can feel skin as opposed to feathers. There's an ugly string of letters tattooed down the length of his spine, stacked on top of one another to spell out his fate as a blood-bag, and she tries not to think about the fact that he's letting her see it at the same time as he lets her touch his wings.

Max breathes out, nearly a sigh, and slowly starts pulling his wings in.

“You'll need to do the undersides,” she says, though she's sure he knows and equally sure that he won't actually be flying soon enough for them to need to be done _now_.

He hums, and settles his wings against his back. She takes her hand away and tries to return the relaxed and thankful look he sends her with something fitting, but can't really manage it.

If she said something to him she knows he would listen. Knows he might even understand. But Furiosa says nothing because his wings are whole and beautiful and hers are dead, and she doesn't know how it changed for him but she knows it won't happen for her.

  
  


Sometime during the night Max turns, and she wakes up with a start as feathers settle over her. She looks over her shoulder and he's sound asleep, not even twitching with dreams, and the night is too quiet and and his face too restful for her to feel bitter jealousy over him having found his wings again.

She lets his wing stay draped over her, a layer of feathers against the chill of night.

  
  


He's been with them for five days when he finally lets her preen the disordered undersides of his wings. Or rather, when she finally lets herself ask again, direct this time.

Furiosa's down to two feathers hanging on by threads, and she should just pluck them and be over with it but that feels like admitting defeat. Let them fall on their own.

She has to sit very nearly in his lap to get to the feathers near the root of his wings, and when he tries to hold his arm up and out of the way the entire time she rolls her eyes and sets it to rest on her shoulder. He isn't wearing a shirt and that seems more important staring at the front of him than the back, makes her aware of all the ways she's touching him and all the other ways she could be.

Max flinches a few times when she brushes against his skin as she works on the delicate axillary feathers but she can see that he's trying to hold himself still, and she can't help but be aware of how close he's letting her into his space.

If she struck out at him right now, she could cripple his wings and he'd never fly again despite the bright new feathers he's grown. There's a chance for the bones to knit together properly but most times they don't, and she doubts he'd stay still long enough for them to have a fair chance anyway.

She traces the curve from shoulder to elbow with careful fingers and thinks about the fact that someone else could so easily break him as well.

When she finishes with both wings the urge to stay and just keep wasting time caressing his feathers is strong, but she makes herself pull back away. His arm is still over her shoulder and she's sitting in between his legs, and when she finally looks at his face his eyes are focused on her dark and yearning.

Furiosa finds that she's leaning in closer and can't quite stop the motion, not when he seems to be swaying forward as well. His hand moves from shoulder to neck and then after a slight pause where she inhales in anticipation his lips are on hers. It's tentative at first, careful, until she runs her tongue over his lips and then he's kissing her like he's starving for it.

She returns the fervor, dives deeper into the feeling of his mouth and wraps her arms around him. She keeps the naked stubs of her wings clamped to her back when she hears the gentle rustle of his wings unfurling to circle around them; the reminder makes her feel a little more desperate, has her pressing her entire body up against his.

He moves from kissing her mouth to her jaw, her neck, and she moans low in her throat at the feeling of his plush lips. Max's other hand is warm as it spans the curve of her waist and she wants it to be other places, wants him touching her all over. The wind from his trembling wings makes her skin feel cold and she shivers with it.

She kisses him again at the same time as she sinks her fingers into the feathers at the shoulder of a wing and he groans into her mouth, and she's close enough to feel him hard through the leather of his trousers when she rocks against him.

“I want you,” she tell him, mostly just because she wants to say it than because she thinks it needs to be said.

His pupils swallow all but a thin ring of color in his eyes as he stares at her, and he makes a rough croaking noise that she thinks is supposed to be one of his little hums.

Furiosa kisses him again and this time tugs at his shoulders, pulls him down to the mattress on top of her. Her folded up wings are uncomfortable under her but she doesn't want to splay them out of the way where they'll be see, wants both of them to forget they even exist.

He's heavy above her and her legs open to cradle his hips, her mouth letting out noises of encouragement into his lips when he ruts against her, worn leather scraping the thin fabric of her underwear.

She traces the beating pulse in his neck with her tongue and her lips at the same time as she brings her hand down between them to grab for the laces of his fly. They have at least the entire night but she wants all of him now, wants him above her and inside her and moving against her, _with_ her, while she has the chance.

Max balances himself on one hand and assists her, yanks away her underwear and shoves down his trousers. And then his cock is pressing inside of her, hot and hard, and her body isn't halfway ready for it despite how much she wants it. She inhales on a gasp and clutches at him as he pushes inside in jerks, until he's fully seated inside her cunt and she's moaning at the stretch and weight and heat of him.

She kisses him sloppily when he draws his hips back and cries out when he snaps them forward to drive into her again, setting a pace that's fast and desperate and perfect.

If she wasn't very wet before she is now, her entire cunt seeming to throb with desire at each thrust. Furiosa wants to touch herself but just the way he feels as he fucks her is enough for now, is sending sharp spikes of pleasure through her as he moves.

He mouths at the side of her neck, lush lips and a teasing scrape of teeth, and she pushes up into him eagerly. Above her she can see his flared wings moving in time with his thrusts, gray feathers sweeping in counterpoint to lend force to his movements, and below her she feels the last of her feathers catch and pull away on the sheets.

There's suddenly water overflowing from her eyes and she fails to fight down a ragged gasping noise at the unwanted surge of tangled feelings inside of herself.

Max snaps his head up to look at her, expression alarmed, and she grabs at him.

“I want it,” she tells him, bucking up against him in hopes that he'll keep moving because he's stopped now, something like confused panic on his face. “I _want_ you to,” she repeats, but her voice cracks and that brings a fresh wave of tears.

There's water leaking from her eyes and she doesn't seem to have any control over it, but what she's saying is the truth; all she wants right now is to feel him, to feel herself.

He shakes his head and pulls out and up and away, and her hand scrabbles at his arm to keep him from leaving entirely. He lays a gentle hand on the side of her face and murmurs, “Hey, hey.” His voice is careful and soft enough that she has to close her burning leaking eyes so she can't see his worried expression. “Furiosa? Hey, it's okay.”

She tries to open her mouth to say- she's not entirely sure what, honestly, but what comes out is a jagged sob.

He moves so he's on his side next to her and Furiosa hooks her left arm around his waist, curls up so her head is tucked under his chin and her face is hidden even if her grotesque wings are visible again.

She can't stop crying and he doesn't try to shush her, just sweeps a hand up and down her side and makes noises that might be words or might just be sound, quiet and gentle and reassuring. The fact that she doesn't want to be crying makes it worse, as does the fact that she hasn't cried in thousands of days, not anything like how she is now.

The tears take a long time to dry up. She's crying for Valkyrie and Angharad and her mother, the Vuvalini and the Green Place, the women she hadn't saved, even Nux. The worst is that she's crying for herself as well, and her jealousy over Max for finding himself a new set of wings.

But eventually she runs out of water, and her face is hot and crusted and disgusting against Max's skin as she tries to rein in her breathing again.

“Okay?” he asks, so careful like she's breakable, “I've got you.”

She opens her swollen eyes to see that one of his wings is arched over them, not touching her anywhere but creating an enclosed space where it's just the two of them, and the sight squeezes one last wave of bitter tears out of her.

He nuzzles against the top of her head, presses a kiss to the buzz of her hair.

She can't see his face at this angle and she's glad for it. “I found my wings the day I was born,” she tells him, voice cracked and hoarse but bereft of emotion. She's too exhausted by her outpouring to feel very much at the moment. “They set me down next to her, and there they were.”

Max hums and holds her in his arms, careful to keep away from the pathetic remains of her wings.

“I didn't feel her die,” Furiosa says, “Aren't you supposed to feel it? She was just _gone_.”

He clears his throat but gives a pause before he actually speaks, like he wants to make sure she doesn't mind him talking. “'s a myth. Doesn't feel like anything.”

And she is reminded all over again that he'd had poor broken wings himself at first, that he'd lost his wingmate as well. “Can you fly?” she asks. She's sure he can, had felt the strength in his wings and the soundness in his feathers for herself as she helped him preen.

“I haven't tried,” Max says, and in his voice is a thread of something she can't identify. Fear, maybe.

“Only a few of the Mothers had wings,” she tells him. “Val and I-” she's proud of how steady her voice is, though it's partly due to the exhaustion she's feeling- “were menaces soon as we'd fledged.”

He hums again, and she feels the low noise of it vibrating through his chest. His hand's stroking her skin still, a repetitive movement she can't decide if she finds it comforting or not.

“I miss her,” she says, very quietly. She's missed Valkyrie since the day she was taken, but now all she has is a single feather of hers instead of a shared set of wings. She misses her and she misses all the opportunities they'll never have, the all the ways they'll never be together again.

“I miss you too,” she tells him, words even quieter than the last. “When you're gone.”

If Max hears her he doesn't react, just continues holding her in his solid arms until it seems pointless to fight against the exhaustion weighing down every cell in her body.

  
  


Furiosa is surprised when he stays. It's not that she expected him to run at first light, but the days add up into double-digits and he's still there, dirtying his hands in the gardens or the garages or watching with a befuddled expression as she tries to corral the newly-minted War Boys into working as a crew defending the trade rig.

He tests his wings from the ground sometimes, up in the air of the gardens when he's mostly alone. Flaps hard enough to send the nearby plants swaying and create clouds of dust, but never jumps up to actually launch himself up into the sky.

His wings look like storm clouds some days, like the remnants of a fire the next.

Hers are naked, the skin dry and itchy as it threatens to peel away. Furiosa doesn't say anything to anyone about cutting them off but she thinks about it, imagines ways to make it look like an accident and imagines just picking up a knife herself and imagines telling their surgeon to do it on purpose.

Max sleeps next to her each night and she manages to fuck him without having a breakdown and it's good, better than she could have hoped to find. It's the sort of thing she could get used to. Which is exactly why when he makes vague noises about being the one to check out a city discovered on an old map to the far north she pushes him into it, pushes him away from her.

She doesn't let herself wonder what happened to the person who gave him his new wings, why he isn't with them.

He kisses her goodbye this time, rests his forehead against hers and then tips his head forward to brush their lips together. It's the first time either has done anything like that when they aren't alone and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment before pulling away and seeing him off, his car loaded with supplies she knows are almost excessive for the length of time the mission should take.

  
  


Furiosa tries not to count the days he's gone, but they're quietly ticking in the back of her mind. There's a sooty gray feather lying on the floor next to her bed when she returns to her room the first night, worn around the edges and unbloodied at the root- a shed feather. Happenstance.

She holds it for comparison next to his cracked brown feather, the one from the Road, and then she drops it out the open window.

  
  


The itching in her wings grows worse, becomes a prickly hot-and-cold feeling, and her muscles ache from how little she's let them even stretch out since losing Val.

In the privacy of her room Furiosa twists a wing around to her front so she can see it better, so she can really take in the unnatural sight of skin where feathers should be. The anatomy of the limb really isn't so different from an arm but she can't hold in a shudder, can't help but picture the golden covering her wings are meant to have or even the black the Citadel forced on her. Anything but this terrible bareness, like a wound half-healed.

She runs her hand down the length of it, the dry skin pebbled at the pores where her feathers should be growing from. It feels acutely sensitive even with light pressure, enough to have her wing twitch unbidden.

She scratches at one of the itchy spots, digs her nails in and almost hopes she draws blood. But against her fingers the skin feels strange, like there's something hard under the surface, and Furiosa goes still for a moment before hauling her wing up as close to her face as she can, ignoring the way the awkward stretch twinges.

There _is_ something hard under the surface. To her absolute disbelief she can make out shadows under the thin skin of her wing, can feel something solid under her fingertips. She realizes that some have even started poking out through the pores, points of darkness against pale skin.

Furiosa lets her wing drop, tucks it up against her back. Closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

Despite the evidence before her right now, she knows that she can't be growing feathers. She'd lost her wings the day she lost her wingmate and nothing can change that, nothing can make her fly again.

She doesn't let herself think about Max, how his wings had gone bare and then bristled with pin feathers, how his wings were broken and dying and are now sleek, healthy.

  
  


By the time it becomes obvious that Max is late to return, there's a covering of dark blood feathers growing over her wings whose presence she can't deny even to herself. Furiosa contemplates ripping them out one by one, cauterizing the roots so there's no chance of more ever growing in, cutting her wings off entirely.

It feels like she's betraying Valkyrie to even have them growing, to even consider being happy about it.

She's used to ignoring what people are saying about her wings, has gotten plenty of practice since they started visibly deteriorating, so it's easy to block out the speculative conversations in the corners of the room as she focuses on the fact that Max is five days overdue.

It's not nearly enough time to panic, but there's worry sitting heavy in her gut. Five days isn't so long, and she doesn't know how he travels, if a delay like this is routine for him, but she doesn't like it.

Things are dangerous out in the wastes.

  
  


When the first of her new feathers uncurl from their sheathes and reveal themselves to be an unmistakable stormy gray, Furiosa curls up into herself and covers her face, though there's no one to see her anyway. She isn't surprised- she wishes she was surprised- and the confirmation of what had been selfishly idling in the back of her mind brings a release of tension as well as a swell of bitter grief.

Her entire life her wings have been honey-gold, grain in the sunshine. A perfect match to Valkyrie's, to the other half of her soul. Even when dyed over black they've been true at their core.

Now the feathers unfurling day by day are gray, like something burned and smoking.

Furiosa can't do this again, can't stand the sight of her connection to Val being covered over even if some part of is so happy, so relieved to be the one sharing Max's wings. She brushes off everyone's attempts to talk to her about it, from the curious who don't know what it means at all to the ones who know far too well what it is.

  
  


Max comes limping up to the Citadel eleven days past when they were expecting him, one side of his car crumpled and a healing gash on his arm.

She stands awkwardly on the lift platform when he gets out of his car, caught between the desire to take him into her arms and the urge to go on pretending that there hasn't been anything growing between them as surely as there are feathers growing on both their wings.

He looks tired and dusty and twitchy, but his gaze gentles when it catches on her, and he takes in a deep breath like he hasn't been breathing in a while when he presses his forehead to hers. He smells like the wasteland, like sweat and blood and guzzoline, and her wings flex against her back as she fights down the desire to wrap them around him. She wonders if he's ever had the same urge.

“Are you alright?” Furiosa asks when she steps back, the greeting at once too long and too brief.

He nods, rubs at the arm that has a bloody bandage tied around it. “Nothing I couldn't handle.”

Standing next to him it's clear that their wings are a matched set, or will be when she finishes molting, and she sees the knowledge of it reflected in his face. But before either can begin to say anything the platform docks itself in the garage bay and their moment of solitude is lost.

  
  


When the council has as much information out of Max as they're ever going to and he's fed and washed, they retreat to the sanctuary of her room for the night like they have so many other times by now.

“Did you know?” she asks when the door is closed. The both of them evaded every question and comment about their wings, but it's different here.

He looks slightly guilty, but shakes his head. “I... guessed,” he says, and ducks his head down. “Might've hoped. But I didn't know.”

Furiosa breathes out. It's somewhat reassuring that he hadn't known, that it wasn't just her struggling with this blindly even if he'd had a head start on her. You can't chose if someone is your wingmate or not and she's not sure what she would have chosen, given the choice. Giving up Valkyrie's wings feels like a suffocating betrayal; gaining Max's feels like air rushing back into her lungs.

She's shared her wings since birth, was as shaped by the knowledge that she and Val were inextricably linked as much as by learning to fly almost before she could really walk. But she isn't the child she was then, and all the wishing in the world won't let her see Valkyrie again until she closes her own eyes that final time.

“I don't want to forget her,” she says.

“You won't,” Max replies, and stretches out one of his wings just enough to stare at. Does he startle when he sees gray instead of brown? Does he remember the look his wingmate gave him when they found their wings? He looks back up at her, wings shuffling into place again. “You didn't forget before.”

Furiosa isn't so sure; she can't recall so many things already and she didn't have a chance to find out about the woman Valkyrie had become, didn't get to find out if she still can braid anyone's hair but her own, if she ever became an Initiate Mother, if she has nightmares dripping with red.

She wonders if dyeing her wings black again will let her pretend that nothing has changed. Except she knows it's futile because things _have_ changed, and she misses Val so much but she would miss Max just as much, wouldn't be able to exchange one for the other. If she has to have another wingmate, if she has to find her soul mirrored in anyone else's... she's glad it's him.

She wonders what Val would think of the situation, if she would laugh at how ridiculous it is. So few people ever find their wings at all and here she and Max are with three different sets between them.

“I missed you,” she tells him. Not the same way she misses Valkyrie, like the loss of another limb slowly scarring over, but the way she misses the sky once she's landed.

Max's eyes go soft and sad, and his hand is on her cheek, cupping her head in one big palm. “Me too,” he says, nodding a little.

She looks at his unkempt wings, charcoal and rainclouds and ash, a perfect match for her own, and she thinks of how sometimes you need to destroy in order to make space for something new. How you have to fall before you can fly.

Furiosa is so tired of falling, of tearing down. She wants to try building, growing; she wants to try flying again.

“Your wings are a mess,” she says, leaning closer into him until there's hardly any space between them, so she can feel the heat of his body radiating out into the cold night air. “You need to take better care of them.”

He hums, and she thinks he understands that she isn't really talking about his wings (not entirely, anyway). Then he closes the distance and kisses her, chaste and far gentler than she'd expect from him being fresh off fending for himself in the wastes.

She gives in to the urge to curl her wings around him finally and his arch out in return, their strong healthy feathers meshing and overlapping, a gray wall of safety and privacy.

“Have you flown yet?” Furiosa asks, and he shakes his head. “We'll try it together, then.”

 


End file.
